TOKYO, Japan - While younger Japanese customers may be veering towards local brands that are in tune with prevailing fashion trends, others are looking for something altogether different. They don’t care about trends. Their closets are already full. They have bought countless branded luxury items over the years. So, if they are going to spend their money on anything, it has to be perfect.

That’s where my favourite Japanese tailor comes in. ICHO is a small, family-run business with a spiritual figurehead and designer in the form of Toru Icho, who was born in 1947 in Kyoto, the historical home of some of Japan’s best luxury artisans. His son, Mits and daughter-in-law Satoko work full-time to translate Toru’s vision into a bonafide business. This is good old-fashioned luxury.

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TOKYO, Japan - “I wanted to start a movement of new generation, young fashion designers in Japan,” Arashi Yanagawa tells me over coffee in Tokyo’s hip Nakameguro neighbourhood. He is speaking of the genesis of John Lawrence Sullivan, the menswear brand he started almost five years ago.

But Arashi hasn’t always been a fashion designer. At first, he followed in his father’s footsteps and spent 13 years in professional boxing. Then, with no fashion training whatsoever, he used his fight money and worked with local pattern cutters to perfect his first collection of two blazers, using vintage garments as a starting point. As a nod to his former life, he named his brand after the 1880’s American bare-knuckle boxer and today, JLS is Japan’s hottest menswear label, known for its slick tailoring and modern accessories.

Despite his non-fashion background, or perhaps because of it, Arashi is at the vanguard of a group of promising, young menswear brands that are taking Tokyo by storm. They offer high quality clothing at prices lower than Lanvin and Thom Browne, but still packing a design punch.

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TOKYO, Japan - Once upon a time, for big luxury brands, Japan was the largest and most important market in the world. Japanese customers, young and old, rich and middle-class, would faithfully spend their money on standard Louis Vuitton bags, Hermès scarves and Gucci shoes. These loyal customers could deliver up to 35% of a luxury brand’s global revenue, a reliable cash cow, even while the Japanese economy was sputtering in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.

And so, a formula for luxury brands slowly gelled over the years: build gigantic retail temples of luxury, influence the editorial of powerful magazines that have a grip on the Japanese psyche, and appeal to the innate Japanese desire to fit in and show status.

But, what would the luxury brands do if this tried-and-tested business model stopped working its magic?

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SHANGHAI, China - While most Chinese are still focused on buying into the prestige and status of international luxury brands, there are emerging local alternatives for those who want something more individual. Bubbling design and fashion scenes in and around Shanghai’s Taikang Lu and JinXian Lu offer a little bit of niche, homespun design to offset the ubiquity, even in China, of Gucci, Prada and Louis Vuitton.

In the new Shanghai, emerging fashion designers seek inspiration from home or abroad, create garments that range from the culturally literal to the conceptually commercial, and target mass and class and everything in between. All the same, they share the same business challenges as their counterparts in other established and emerging design centres, from London and New York to Mumbai and Buenos Aires.

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BEIJING, China – My first glance at Beijing’s brand new airport (BCIA) was also the first sign of China’s stylish transformation since my previous visit here 7 years ago. I couldn’t take my eyes off the ceiling, which seemed to go on forever, as I zoomed through immigration and retrieved my bag. I was in and out in less than 30 minutes.

When I commented on the airport’s breathtaking design and efficiency to locals, they proudly informed me that BCIA was completed in only 4 years and has run without a hitch from day one. This is particularly notable when compared to the disastrous opening of London Heathrow’s Terminal 5, which opened around the same time as BCIA, but took 6 years to build and is still not running as expected. And, the success of BCIA also provides the perfect analogue for China’s nascent fashion industry.

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PARIS, France – Boucheron, the Gucci Group-owned jeweler, is leading the way amongst luxury brands in harnessing the influence, passion and talents of its online fans to help promote the Boucheron brand on the Internet.

Founded in 1858 by Frédéric Boucheron, The House of Boucheron is one of the most storied jewelers in Paris’ sparkling Place Vendome. In the past, Boucheron has been a jeweler to international royalty, from the Indian Maharaja Bhupindar Singh of Patiala to Czar Alexander III and Queen Elizabeth II. More recently,  Hollywood royalty like Eva Longoria, Nicole Kidman, and Penelope Cruz have also found themselves bejeweled in Boucheron.

With a luxury profile and brand positioning like this, it would be easy to dismiss the Internet as a sales channel and communication platform. But today, Boucheron is moving into the online space with as much prescience as Mr. Boucheron did when he was first jeweler to set up shop in the Place Vendome.

I spoke to Boucheron to find out more.

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PARIS, France – There was wall-to-wall coverage of Yves Saint Laurent’s funeral in Paris on Thursday, but as usual, it was Suzy Menkes, in her own erudite and quirky way, who best managed to capture the mood of the moment in her article and video about Saint Laurent’s final farewell.

That John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Ricardo Tisci, Valentino Garavani, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Sonia Rykiel, Stefano Pilati, Mark Jacobs, Alber Elbaz, Hubert de Givenchy and Vivienne Westwood were all there to pay homage speaks to Saint Laurent’s towering status amongst his peers and YSL successors. The one notable absentee was Karl Lagerfeld.

Marc Jacobs, speaking of Saint Laurent’s influence on his own designs, said simply “He’s the person who taught me everything I know.” In creative fields like fashion, it is this kind of recognition, respect and influence that stands the test of time. Not dollars and cents.

LONDON, United Kingdom – Back in 1995, Netscape Navigator was the dominant web-browser with a market share of more than 90%.  People were talking about the launch of Altavista, an Internet search engine that acheived 300,000 hits on its very first day. On the fashion end of things, the New York Times’ Amy Spindler was tearing apart Donna Karan and raving about Mark Eisen in her review of the New York A/W 1995 collections.

Today, Netscape’s share of web-browser use is less than 1% and Altavista is a relic. Donna Karan still puts out collections in New York, but she scarcely merits a full length review in Cathy Horyn’s reviews. Nobody even remembers Mark Eisen. In the worlds of Fashion and the Internet, things can change very quickly indeed. Combine the two together, and things travel at lightspeed.

That’s why the longevity and continued market dominance of  the UK’s VOGUE.COM, which also launched in 1995, is remarkable. I spoke to Editor Dolly Jones about the new technology and content underlying the relaunched site. Not one to rest on her laurels, we also discussed the business imperatives for keeping VOGUE.COM at the top of its game.

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MILAN, Italy – Is Diesel’s Renzo Rosso on the prowl again?

Word on the street is that Rosso is in talks to acquire Superfine Jeans, the hot London-based premium denim brand, founded in 2003 by Lucy Pinter and Flora Evans. Superfine has become well known for its directional silhouettes and popularity amongst the global style A-list, including Kate Moss, Gisele Bundchen and Mary-Kate Olsen.

While Mr. Rosso has been acquisitive in the past, he has tended to focus more on the fashion end of things, acquring stakes in  Maison Martin Margiela, DSquared2, and most recently, Sophia Kokosalaki, through Diesel’s Staff International subsidiary.

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One look at the current advertising campaign for Hermès, and it’s clear that India is on the radar screen of Western luxury brands. But this is not a new phenomenon. At the recent Walpole Seminar on China & India, Dr. Amin Jaffer, International Director of Asian Art at Christie’s, described the long relationship that India has had with European luxury brands, dating back to the late 1800’s.

Today, however, things aren’t as straightforward. Other Walpole seminar participants like Mohan Murjani (of the Murjani Group – partners to Jimmy Choo, Gucci and Bottega Veneta in India) also revealed that new luxury entrants in India are up against strong domestic players, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and inconsistent infrastructure. Break-even will take longer than some might have hoped.

On the Internet side, despite the naturally chatty and curious Indian nature, things have also been very slow to develop.  I explored this topic in an article in Luxeletter, an online publication from the Murjani Group, covering the luxury industry in India.

The entire article is republished below.

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